2015 All-Latin America Research Team: Local Markets Strategy, No. 3: Holly Huffman, Luis Oganes & team

< The 2015 Latin America Research Team
Holly Huffman, Luis Oganes & teamJ.P. MorganFirst-place appearances: 1

Total appearances: 6

Team debut: 1995

After three consecutive years as a runner-up, J.P. Morgan rises to third place. Holly Huffman debuted in 2014 as head of this squad — replacing Felipe Queiroga Pianetti, who jumped to Lazard Asset Management Securities — and shares the reins this year with previously unranked Luis Oganes. The new leaders are “able to integrate individual market views and formulate them from a portfolio perspective,” attests one admirer. Their four-person team, whose members work out of New York and London, believe that it’s “important to monitor Latin America’s vulnerabilities amid more volatile global markets, driven by divergent [Group of Ten] central bank policies, swings in commodities and ongoing political uncertainties,” Oganes says. Persistent and large current-account deficits as well as high inflation are among the region’s challenges, he adds. As a result, the strategists recommend that investors maintain an underweight stance in the area, restricted to bond markets that screen as having insufficient premium in the curve — namely, those of Chile and Colombia. In the foreign currency realm, he explains, “with the dollar still biased higher over the coming months” in the run-up to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s anticipated rate increase, they also favor an underweight position. Huffman, 35, signed on with J.P. Morgan in 2002 and has worked for the firm in both New York and São Paulo in several roles, mostly in macro strategy. She earned an MBA at the Columbia Business School in New York. Oganes obtained a Ph.D. in economics from New York University. Before joining J.P. Morgan in 1997, he spent three years as an analyst at Grupo Apoyo, a Lima-based economic think tank. The 48-year-old moved from New York to London last year, after being promoted to global head of emerging-markets research. This year he also co-captains, with Vladimir Werning, the No. 2 group on the Sovereign Debt roster and a troupe that merits a runner-up position on the Economics lineup.